Prefabricated double wall concrete components have been used in the past to construct building walls. Such wall members may include a plurality of welded wire spacing frames to retain the slabs of the wall member in a spaced apart configuration. Typically, the welded wire spacing frames provide limited structural reinforcement of the wall member. It has been proposed to use such prefabricated wall members as structural flooring and/or roofing members. However, a dual slab member designed as a wall may not be readily adaptable to a floor or roofing application due to different loading forces on the member. For example, a wall member used in a floor application may have a limited span distance due to the minimum structural capacity provided by the welded wire spacing frames. More robust welded steel trusses having upper and lower longitudinal portions embedded in respective upper and lower slabs have been proposed as a framing structure for a composite truss that can span up to 60 feet and greater. However, welding and/or other structural attachment techniques used to manufacture such framing structures significantly adds to the cost and time needed to manufacture the trusses and thereby increases the cost of the composite truss.
This invention is an improvement of prior U.S. Pat. No. 7,891,150 for a Composite Truss by Robert D. Finfrock and Allen R. Finfrock, the contents of which prior U.S. Patent is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. In this prior patent a composite truss has a pair of spaced apart prestressed concrete panels and a plurality of substantially vertical members spanning between the pair of spaced apart concrete panels, one end portion of each vertical member being embedded in one of the spaced apart concrete panels and the opposite end being imbedded in the other concrete panel. The truss includes a diagonal member spanning between the one end of a vertical member and the other end of an adjacent vertical member. Each end of the diagonal member non-structurally engages an end of a vertical member. Each diagonal member also has a length thereof embedded in the concrete in each spaced apart concrete panel. Each end of the composite truss has a prefabricated concrete end bearing beam for supporting the end of the composite truss.
This invention relates to a dual panel composite truss having a pair of spaced apart and generally parallel prestressed concrete panels having a structurally supporting end bearing truss on each end thereof. The end bearing steel truss incorporates a versatile and adaptive structural support capabilities on each end of the composite truss which advantageously forms each end of each concrete panel mold when the concrete is poured to form the panels.